Importance of social media for tourism businesses: Execution of the Delphi technique in Antalya

In the last few years, the great developments in technology have strongly affected the highly competitive tourism sector. Hotels, tour operators, travel agencies and airlines have equally been affected by these developments and turned to social media to increase profits and gain competitive advantage. This research has been made to target individuals in mid to high management roles in hotels, tour operators and travel agencies as well as government officials in tourism and academicians. For this reason as a research group, a selection of 10 mid to high management individuals in the tourism sector, 1 government official and 3 academicians have been interviewed using the Delphi technique with 3 rounds of questionnaires. The results obtained through this research have been analysed through the Delphi method, which is used in social studies. Purpose of this research is to assess the perception of Antalya's prominent mid to high management industry leaders, government officials and academicians towards social media marketing, as well as their perception of advantages and disadvantages of the said marketing tool. The research is divided into three parts. First parts highlights the use of information technology, Web 2.0, electronic marketing and electronic marketing in the tourism sector. The second part gives examples of how social media is perceived as well as giving examples from business that use social media as a marketing tool. Third part of this report entails conclusions derived from professionals' views regarding advantages and disadvantages of social media marketing in the tourism sector. In this part, the growing importance of social media and how it greatly impacts the tourism businesses, including how industry leaders should regard it as a marketing tool, is highlighted. The research report is limited to the professionals, government officials and academicians in the city of Antalya. Keywords: Internet, Web 2.0, Social Media, Social Platforms, Social Media Marketing